A Fairly Normal Work Schedule: Cameron Judd on Freelancing

Cameron Judd’s recent novel, Outlaw Train, tells the story of a deputy left in charge, a train full of “curiosities,” and a whole mess of miscreants up to no good. A bit weirder (in the best of ways) than most of Judd’s novels, Outlaw Train does have all the clean lines, gut-twisting plotting, and vivid characters.

If Max Brand and Sherwood Anderson collaborated on a novel, it might go sort of like Outlaw Train. Read it for the characterization, for the plotting, for the style. I read Judd’s novels with my mouth open and a pen in my hand, taking notes on craft and highlighting beautiful turns of phrase.

Two years ago, Judd quit his “day job” to take a second shot at freelancing full-time. Below, we talk about the struggle, the freedom, and the… walks.

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How long have you been working as a full-time freelancer and what sort of work do you do?

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Cameron Judd: I have freelanced full-time in two different periods, the first time for about eight years of the 1990s and now for the past two years. I write commercial fiction, westerns and historical novels, and am also working on a contemporary thriller set in a small Tennessee town.

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What is a typical day like for you? How is it different than a traditional “day job”?

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Cameron Judd: I try to work a fairly normal work schedule, starting when my wife leaves for her job, though sometimes I wake up early, around 4 or 5 AM., and get an early start after a couple of cups of coffee.

Sometimes I find my mind works best early in the day. Other times I seem to get rolling full-speed in later morning. It varies, and the fact I can work in a variable pattern is one of the great benefits of free-lancing full-time.

I like being able to make part of the job being taking myself and our dog on a good, healthy walk every day. I’ve lost about 25 pounds since becoming a free-lancer.

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Is there anything you wish you’d known before you took the plunge into freelancing?

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Cameron Judd: Having done it before, I knew pretty well what I was getting into. I actually took the most recent plunge into freelancing after leaving a full-time job that I held for nine years, but which was steadily ceasing to be a fit for me and leaving me depressed almost every day. It was just time to go for a multitude of reasons.

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What are some of the frustrations of freelancing and how do you handle them?

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Cameron Judd: The chief frustration is cash flow. The world functions on the basis of people getting paid once a week, or every two weeks, or every month, and freelancing just doesn’t usually fit that pattern. You deal with that through trying to be sensible, living a day at a time, refusing to panic, and praying a whole, whole lot. The last isn’t a tongue-in-cheek comment. I wouldn’t survive without daily prayer and the belief that I am supposed to be doing this work. And I couldn’t do it without my wife, Rhonda, who is behind me 100 percent and who works very hard herself in a full-time clerical position at a hospital.

Another frustration can be those times when self-discipline fails, daily life intervenes, computers crash, or any number of things come up to make it hard to achieve the daily writing quota. The only way to deal with that is move on to the next day and give it another try.

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What’s the best part?

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Cameron Judd: Freedom, freedom, and freedom. Knowing you are going to wake up and get to do something that is satisfying and that you can do well. In my most recent traditional job I used to hear my boss’s footsteps coming down the hall toward my office, and a huge wave of dread would come over me because I knew it would be almost certainly something negative. Now I savor the silence in my hallway at home. During weekdays the only thing that comes down the hall now is Lola, our dog.

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Is there a project that you simply couldn’t have pulled off if you’d been working at a full-time day job?

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Cameron Judd: I’m not sure there is. One of the most productive writing periods of my life was when I was working full-time in the newspaper business and getting up at 4 AM daily to write for two or three hours before going to work. So a lot can be done even with a full-time job in place. But it’s a lot less tiring to not have to get up that early unless you just want to.

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A salary… is it friend or foe?

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Cameron Judd: A friend in terms of money. A foe in terms of the time eaten up by the job that goes with getting a salary. It would be great to figure out a way to get the salary and skip the job, but I don’t think I’m clever enough to do that.

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Any parting words? Words of encouragement or caution?

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Cameron Judd: Be aware it’s going to be tough. It pretty much always is. But as writer Robert Randisi said to me once via email, “It’s all a struggle. You might as well struggle doing something you love.” But before you make the plunge, write as a sideline to your regular job and prove to yourself and others that you can actually make some sales.